Illinois puts a piece of paper between you and a home repair contractor. Over $1,000 the contractor must give you a written contract or work order stating the total cost including parts and materials, and must hand you the state’s Home Repair: Know Your Consumer Rights pamphlet and get your signature acknowledging it. At $1,000 or under the pamphlet is still required, just without the signature.
| Service | Typical |
|---|---|
| Auto repair shop labor rateIllinois average | $135 per hour |
Ranges last checked September 2026. They come down automatically when they are due to be rechecked.
Every figure above comes from a named source we can link to, with the date we last checked it. We publish ranges rather than single prices because a range is what a provider will actually give you: the same job moves with what is being worked on, the materials, how hard it is to get at and how busy the trade is locally. Treat these as the order of magnitude to expect before you call, not as a quote.
Where a source publishes figures state by state, this page shows the figure for this state rather than a national average. Where no state-level source exists, it shows the national range and the local factors that move a job within it. We do not scale a national number by a multiplier of our own invention.
Every range carries a review date. When that date passes the number comes down until it is rechecked, rather than sitting here undated.
Under the Home Repair and Remodeling Act, work over $1,000 requires a written contract or work order stating the total cost including parts and materials. That is not a license and it is not a bond: Illinois has chosen disclosure over registration here, which means the document you are handed is the protection, and a contractor who wants to work off a handshake is asking you to give up the only one the statute gives you.
For work over $1,000 the contractor must provide the state’s Home Repair: Know Your Consumer Rights pamphlet and obtain your written acknowledgment that you received it. At $1,000 or under the pamphlet must still be handed over, but no signed acknowledgment is required. If neither the pamphlet nor the contract appears on a job clearly over the line, that is a straightforward failure to follow the Act.
Illinois sets a minimum for home repair contractors rather than leaving it to whatever certificate turns up: public liability and property damage cover of $100,000 per person and $300,000 per occurrence for bodily injury, and $50,000 per occurrence for property damage. A contractor with a net worth above $1,000,000 is outside that requirement. Those are floors, not adequacy: on a job that could damage a neighbor’s property as easily as your own, the floor and the risk are different numbers.
The Act’s own definition of home repair excludes work under $500, so the smallest jobs carry none of this. That is worth knowing in both directions: it explains why a small repair arrives with no paperwork, and it means a job quoted just under that line is a job with no statutory documents behind it.
Shop labor in Illinois sits above the national figure, in the middle of the upper half of the national spread rather than at the top of it. That is an hourly rate and not a bill: the invoice is the rate multiplied by the hours the job is booked at, so two shops quoting the same number can still land far apart on the same repair. The table above carries the current figure and what moves it.
For home work, let the paperwork sort the field. Ask for the written contract and the consumer rights pamphlet up front on anything over $1,000, and read whether the contract actually states a total cost including parts and materials, since that is what the statute asks for and a vague figure does not satisfy it. Ask for the certificate of insurance too, and check it clears the statutory floor rather than merely existing.
Licensing itself is local in Illinois rather than statewide for most trades, so ask which municipality or county issues the license for the address in question and confirm it there. Chicago in particular runs its own scheme, and a license held in one suburb does not settle anything about the next.
Over $1,000. The Home Repair and Remodeling Act requires a written contract or work order stating the total cost, including parts and materials.
A pamphlet the contractor must give you. Above $1,000 they must also obtain your written acknowledgment that you received it. At $1,000 or under the pamphlet is still required, without the signature.
Public liability and property damage cover of $100,000 per person and $300,000 per occurrence for bodily injury, and $50,000 per occurrence for property damage. A contractor with a net worth above $1,000,000 is exempt from the requirement.
No. Its definition of home repair excludes work under $500, so the smallest jobs carry none of these documents.
Licensing for most trades is handled locally rather than through a single statewide license. Ask which municipality or county issues it for your address and confirm the number with that authority.